There’s a trivial way of fixing social media without mass surveillance or free speech restrictions: Just put a punitive tax on advertising revenue. People can say whatever they want, but the incentives behind social media disappear. This won’t be implemented because this was never about making society a better place.

And your examples only show that where there’s no safeguards, governments don’t need to be subtle, but in semi-functional democracies, they still need to at least pretend to be electable.